After Apple announced the iPhone 4S last October, it gradually sunk in to iPhone 4 owners that the voice assistant Siri wasn’t coming to older devices. Then when complicated jailbreak tweaks brought Siri to the iPhone 4, we saw that the older iPhone was perfectly capable of using Siri. Heck, even the iPhone 3GS can run Siri without a hitch. The only logical conclusion was that Siri’s iPhone 4S exclusivity was about marketing, marketing, and marketing.
Today, however, a chip analyst is piping up to disagree. As reported by CNET, there’s a technology called Audience, which specializes in isolating voices from background noise. As it turns out, Audience is integrated into Apple’s A5 chip. Analyst Linley Gwennap believes that this solves the mystery of why Apple kept Siri away from older devices.
Though the iPhone 4 also contains Audience tech integrated into the A4 chip, it isn’t as advanced. Audience said that its iPhone 4 era technology was only effective when your phone was held close to your mouth when speaking. The iPhone 4S noise cancellation, however, can distinguish a voice from background noise even when held farther away (as Siri is often used).
This sounds like a plausible explanation, and such perfectionism on Apple’s part would fit with the company’s tendencies. But there’s one glaring hole in this explanation: why doesn’t the iPad 2 have Siri? It houses the same A5 chip as the iPhone 4S, which means that it too should use the same Audience isolation technology.
There doesn’t always have to be one explanation for a mystery. Audience tech could have played a big part in Apple’s decision to leave the iPhone 4 in the dark, but marketing likely played a part as well. If you take away Siri, then a faster processor and a better camera are the only selling features of the iPhone 4S. Those are great features, but they lack excitement. Siri provides that, and Apple knew it.